A Case Study On Novice Junior High School Chemistry Teachers’ PCK

Pedagogical Content Knowledge(PCK) was first put forward by Professor Shulman, which identifies the distinctive bodies of knowledge for teaching. PCK is the core knowledge of teacher and an important part of teacher’s professional development. In teaching practice, teachers often encounter obviously different students and diverse range of teaching topics. In order to make students better understand and master the subject matter, teachers often employ distinctive instructional strategies and ways of knowledge representations. PCK represents the ability and knowledge to transform the subject matter into the form which is easy for students to understand. Novice teachers’ PCK will be optimized in the process of professional development.This article adopts case study method, selects three novice junior high school chemistry teachers and an experienced teacher as the research object. In order to examine their PCK deeply,data of interview survey, classroom observation and teaching text is collected and analyzed. This article tries to answer the following questions:(1)What is chemistry teachers’ PCK?(2)What are the characteristics and differences ofthe novice teacher’s PCK and the experienced teacher’s PCK in the instruction of specific subject matters?(3)What are the main factors affecting the development of the novice teacher’s PCK?Research conclusions from the findings:1.There are differences between novice teachers’ PCK and the experienced teacher’s PCK on the following five aspects: the orientation to teach chemistry, knowledge of chemistry curricula, knowledge of students’ understanding of chemistry, knowledge of instructional strategies and knowledge of assessment of students’ chemistry learning. Compared to the experienced teacher’s PCK, the novice teacher’s PCK has the following characteristics:(1)They can identify with the new curricula idea and put them into practice,but their classroom practice tends to be teacher-centered;(2) Their knowledge of curricula are rich and they can grasp the core teaching contents. But their apprehension of teaching contents is superficial without realizing the value of thought idea, process and approach behind the knowledge. They put excessive emphasis on the basic knowledge and skills.(3) They recognize students’ knowledge, experience as well as their difficulties, but don’t have a deep comprehension of the causes leading to the difficulties.(4) They have rich instructional activities and representations to help students learn, but their consciousness and means of letting students participate are insufficient. They need to strengthen the ability to choose appropriate instructional strategies through utilizing the student thoughts.(5) They focus on the mastery of knowledge and the mainly evaluation method isthe paper-pencil test. They lack real time evaluation to students’ classroom learning situation.2. The factors affecting the development of novice teachers’ PCK, in turn, are professional learning based on practice, teaching reflection and improvement, understanding student, learning from the excellent teachers, teaching and researching groups’ activities. Finally, according to the meaning of PCK and empirical results, the corresponding development suggestions are put forward.